Will CSC’s order be respected?

Well, hopefully not but only if Richel Bacaltos, Paulus Cañete and most of all, Mayor Johnny de los Reyes will honor a lawful order.

A Freeman exclusive report yesterday said that the Civil Service Commission (CSC) has overturned the decision of the TCC Board of Trustees terminating Tomas Ramos and has ordered the latter’s reinstatement as TCC president with full back wages.

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The CSC declaration that Ramos’s termination was illegal from the beginning has mooted the question of who between Bacaltos and Cañete is entitled to the title of “OIC President.” It now appears that the two have been quarreling over nothing all along.

Hopefully, none of the three principal characters in the fight for control of the TCC will complicate matters by disobeying the CSC order. Apparently, Ramos isn’t the Board of Trustees’ fair-haired boy.

Whether that is enough to make him acceptable to de los Reyes remains to be seen but a statement attributed by the Freeman to the mayor’s budget officer was ominous. The city, Edgar Mabinay said, “will wait for the court to order Ramos’s reinstatement.”

I hope that he was misquoted and that what he actually meant and said was that they will wait for the Commission’s, not the court’s, order of reinstatement. To this, I must add that a budget officer has no business speaking for the city on a matter that does not involve his office unless he is one of the many (only 14, by the mayor’s count) relatives that de los Reyes brought to City Hall.

Mabinay (is he the same fellow who has been asked to explain where the money that Talisay’s contingent to the Sinulog won, went?) was also quoted by the Freeman as saying that whoever sits as college president or as member of its Board of Trustees should show respect to the mayor because the city subsidizes the school.

Poor fellow, he doesn’t seem to understand how government works and who owns government money. The mayor may be the head of the city but he is not empowered to dispense government resources as he pleases so that recipients should be grateful for his benevolence and should pay homage to him like the subjects of old paid homage to their kings.

Also, will someone please tell Mabinay that respect is earned, not demanded?

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TV5 station manager Karla Kintanar Fernandez isn’t the type who easily gets riled up so when she does blow her top, it could only mean that something horrible really happened.

Yesterday, Karla was still fuming over her experience at the Chong Hua Hospital where she brought her mother, veteran broadcaster Lee, Tuesday afternoon.

Karla said, in a text message to some of her friends, that they rushed her mom to the hospital for acute abdominal pains. At the emergency room, a young doctor or nurse asked ma’am Lee a few questions after which he recommended that the patient be admitted.

Karla said it took them a few minutes to make a deposit on hospital bills but they were made to wait some five hours at the ER before her mom was finally brought to her room.

But what Karla really found infuriating is that all the time that her mom – then already very hungry-- was in the ER, not anyone from the hospital came to explain what was happening.

“When I finally approached the doctor’s/nurse’s table to call their attention, they just shrugged their shoulders and told me that the doctors aren’t here yet,” Karla said, adding that what happened was simply terrible. “Never Again!” she vowed.

What Karla’s experience teaches us is that it takes more than just the most modern equipment in order for a hospital to be considered a really good one. It also takes manners.

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